Finn's Going

Part One

Thinking

A brick with three holes in it (part one)

I didn’t want to put a brick with three holes in it through Old Grundy’s window. But I just couldn’t think of any other way to get at that stupid stuffed otter of his.

I dug the brick out of the rockery in our back garden. That was on Saturday, the day after I started speaking again, when I finally told them my name. I hadn’t said a thing for six weeks. Don’t ask me why because I’m not really sure myself yet.

The rockery is my mum’s idea of a joke. It’s really a pile of rubble left over from the new shed. My dad reclaimed the bricks from a building site because reclaimed bricks are more environmentally friendly. Obviously not all three-holed bricks are reclaimed or better for the environment. I mean, there isn’t any law about it. At least none I’ve heard of.

My dad spent the whole of last summer building the shaky shed. He uses it to keep his dad’s carpentry tools in. He doesn’t get to use them much because he spends most of his time teaching kids like me. It’s one of the slightly smaller things that get him down. The news on TV is another. Sometimes he even shouts at the TV and calls politicians rude names.

My dad doesn’t teach me because he said it would be unbearable for both of us. He’s sad most of the time now since the thing with Finn. He doesn’t speak very much either because he’s too busy counting everything he can find to count, and speaking is one of the things my family doesn’t really do anymore since Finn.

Putting a brick through Old Grundy’s window makes me feel sad just telling you about it. Holt Street, where I live, isn’t the kind of street that just leaves eco-friendly bricks lying around. I’m not saying we’re poor. We just don’t leave bricks lying around, either, if you know what I mean.

That’s something you have to know about me from the start—I’m always going off on one. My mum says I’m highly imaginative but my dad says I suffer from acute diarrhea of the mouth. So you can take your pick. If you want to, you can skip those things when you feel like it.

A brick with three holes in it (part two)

When I finally dug the brick out I also didn’t immediately think This is exactly the right reclaimed brick to put through Old Grundy’s front window.

I’m not saying the plan wasn’t sneaking around inside my head for a while because it was. But it wasn’t an:

X = the front window

Y = the place by the hedge

Z = the brick with three holes soon to pass through X

kind of plan, either.

Though I did wash the mud and cat poo off the brick before I put it inside my schoolbag beside the maths homework I keep forgetting to do.

Sunday seemed to go on forever. It felt like it was made up of the time you get at the dentist’s and I kept on thinking Am I really going to do this? Am I really going to do this? The next thing I knew it was Monday morning and I was running away from Briggs Street in case Old Grundy’d called the cops already.

Touch 1 Touch 2 Touch 3

Even though I’m on the run now and even though I’m not going to school, I have to stop at Clemens Road to do touch 1 touch 2 touch 3.

Clemens Road has a lot of trees still on it. It also has a lot of hedges that have been trimmed into animal shapes, like birds and cats and giraffes. It makes the street look like a zoo where all the animals have paused for a photograph while escaping. They’re covered in car fumes but they still look alive. Touch 1 touch 2 touch 3 is this game I made up about a million years ago but I can’t stop doing it no matter what. And it changes depending upon what’s going on. It started off as just one of those things you do. But it stopped being a laugh and became more like work, like the time Finn and me cut Old Grundy’s garden for him.

Now I just have to do it. I have to run up to the tree outside number 9¹ and touch it three times saying, Touch 1 touch 2 touch 3. Next I have to do the tree at number 10² then I have to go back and do number 5³. Lastly I have to go back to number 10 again⁴.

About Old Grundy

I know in things like this people like to know what other people look like and that sort of thing. So I’ll put it in as I remember it.

Grundy is a graying crumple with no teeth who looks like he should be in a cartoon or something. His hands are amazing because they twist and turn like old tree roots and look too big for him. He also has the biggest ears I’ve ever seen. I asked my dad about this. He said men’s ears keep on growing no matter what. He also said their noses keep on growing, too. For ages Finn and me followed all these old blokes around to see if my dad was winding us up or not.

Turns out it’s true.

Another thing about Old Grundy is he was always cracking one off. And it wasn’t just the noise, either. I mean, it isn’t exactly whiz-popping or anything like that. This one time we were helping him cut his back garden. Finn and me were at the other end of the garden raking up the cut grass. It was hot but there was a breeze that kept blowing things toward us. Old Grundy just kept cracking them off one after another. And the breeze kept shoving the radiation cloud down toward our end of the garden. You could even smell them over the smell of cut grass. And that’s quite a strong smell. The weird thing was that Old Grundy kept pretending that nothing was happening. No matter how loud or lethal, he just went on using his lawn mower. I couldn’t look at Finn because he kept pretending to choke and his face always makes me want to laugh myself to bits anyway. Which is funny because it looks like mine.

One hundred and twelve upright vacuum cleaners and counting

Old Grundy’s lived at number sixty-six since the beginning of time. He lives on his own with his amazing collections and he smells of fish and chips.

Old Grundy has two hundred and seventy-nine portraits of the queen hanging all over the walls of his spare room. I know because I looked one time. There were a lot but I can’t say, Yes, I counted them and there are exactly two hundred and seventy-nine of them. I didn’t bother counting them because, well, that would be as mad as collecting them in the first place.

One time I asked Old Grundy why two hundred and seventy-nine and not two hundred and eighty or a googolplex or something. Old Grundy said, One hundred and twelve upright vacuum cleaners and counting. This must’ve made some sense to him because it didn’t make any to me at all.

His most worrying collection, though, is three hundred and fourteen stuffed animals.

Noah’s ark

¹

12 stuffed badgers

27 stuffed cats

3 stuffed snakes

12 of his stuffed pet dogs²

2 ½ stuffed crocodiles

39 stuffed owls

1 stuffed otter³

12 stuffed eagles

9 stuffed robins

4 stuffed gerbils

653 stuffed mice

1 stuffed laughing hyena⁴

2 very stuffed lions

The groove my feet have worn

I try to walk normally even though I’m really running away and my belly’s gurgling like that time Finn had that sore throat. I go toward the bus stop even though I know I’m not going to school, even though I probably won’t ever go to school ever again. Truth is I don’t even know why I’m doing this. The trouble is everything still looks so normal but it doesn’t feel normal. All the houses and the gardens and cars are doing all the things they always do. But they just feel different.

It’s like my feet think this is what always happens so it always will. It’s like they’ve worn a groove or something. I may be just a kid, but I know things never stay the same. No matter what.

Even though all the houses and gardens and cars will look the same tomorrow, they won’t be. Even though the bus stop will still be there tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, things won’t be the same. If you look you can see things changing every single second of the day and night. Things get broken, things get fixed, things get lost, and things get found. Or sometimes they just stay broken or lost.

All this stuff sneaks up on you so it’s hard to spot. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just the way things are.

As I walk toward the bus stop I’m trying hard not to feel sorry for my stupid feet. I know that sounds mad but you have to be careful about these things. There’s just too many things to feel sorry for. My mum says that’s what’s wrong with my dad.

Things my dad feels sorry for:

People who get hurt

People who are hungry

People who give up¹

People who are lost

People who are afraid all the time

People who are rubbish at DIY²

People who are forced to do things they don’t want to do

People who think they need guns

People who are going bald

People who don’t feel sorry for anyone

Beast + wooden fence + rusty razor wire + tin foil and garbage bin liners=

There’s this terrible beast dog living at number forty-two on the corner of Ahlberg Row. All the local kids are scared of it because no one’s ever seen it. The beast lives behind one of those high wooden fences you can’t see through. If it got out you just know it would rip you to pieces in about two seconds flat. And it’s always trying to get out. It’s always throwing itself at the fence and making it shudder like mad. Bobby Thompson said he heard it did escape once and it bit some kid’s willy right off. I don’t think that’s true for several reasons. The first is Bobby Thompson is a big fat liar. The second is it would have had to help him get his trousers off or the kid mustn’t have been wearing any. And who’d be mad enough to do that? Even Airplane Kev wouldn’t be that mad.

It’s called the beast because no one knows what its real name is or even what it looks like. And even if you wanted to climb up the fence, say on someone’s shoulders, so you could look over and see what it’s like, you can’t. You can just forget it because of the big scrolls of rusty razor wire wound along the top. Razor wire catches you and slices you up. So you’d have to be left there because if anyone else tried to help you, they’d get caught too. The rust would give you blood poisoning and you’d die anyway. It would just be slower and hurt more.

No one knows who even owns the beast. The upstairs windows you can just see through the razor wire have tin foil and black garbage bin liners taped all over them. I suppose that’s in